Three weeks before that, the Chinese Cabinet issued a white paper that “emphasised Beijing’s ‘comprehensive jurisdiction’ over Hong Kong and raised concerns that the city’s high degree of autonomy and independent judiciary is under threat,” according to the South China Morning Post. Britain returned control of the capitalist city-state to China on July 1, 1997, with the promise of a high degree of autonomy.

“The Chinese government is trying to go back on their promises with the white paper, and I’m here to take a stand against that,” Edward Ho, a 17-year-old student, told Bloomberg News.

According to the New York Times, the demonstrators are younger and more committed to change than Hong Kong protesters have been in the past, while Beijing supporters are also taking a harsher stance. “A showdown is getting more and more inevitable by the day, and some degree of violence is imminent,” Lau Nai-keung, one of Beijing’s most prominent allies in Hong Kong, told the Times.

Further

In further proof U.S. cops are out of control - cue LAPD killing a homeless man - comes Cleveland's WTF response to a lawsuit by the family of Tamir Rice, shot dead in a park for playing with a toy gun. His death, says the city, was "directly and proximately caused by (his) failure to exercise due care to avoid injury.” To wit: He's to blame for his own murder because he didn't understand he was in the wrong body. The kind that gets shot - the black kind.